The head of the sales team of an international call-centre was arrested by the Cyber Crime police station on Wednesday in a case of corporate espionage.

The head of the sales team of an international call-centre was arrested by the Cyber Crime police station on Wednesday in a case of corporate espionage.

“The accused, Tejas Desai, 38, a Borivli resident, allegedly sent details of around 30,000 persons from his call centre’s database to a rival company, resulting in huge losses to his company” said an officer from the cyber crime police station at Bandra Kurla Complex. Desai was earning Rs11 lakh per annum, and his call centre was linked with a Bhandup-based pharmaceutical company, police added.

“A rival call centre had offered to pay Desai 5,000 US dollars (approx. Rs2.2 lakh) if he would share the contact details of probable customers (called leads). Over the past few months, Desai sent them around 30,000 leads,” said the officer.

Suspecting a data leak in the office, management installed software to find out who was leaking the data. They then discovered Desai was using his personal email to send the leads, the officer added. The management then approached the BKC cyber crime police station in May. “After going through the evidence and based on our own investigations we determined that Desai had indeed been leaking data to the rival company,” added the officer.

The cyber crime police interrogated Desai, following which they found out he had allegedly made a deal with a comparatively new rival call centre to share his company’s leads for 5000 dollars.

Police then arrested Desai on Wednesday on charges of criminal breach of trust, violating the confidentiality agreement signed with the company and under some sections of the Information Technology Act. They also seized a mobile phone, hard disk and pen drive from Desai, who was presented before the local Esplanade court that remanded him to police custody till June 6.

Joint commissioner of police (crime) Himanshu Roy said: “Companies should be updated on the technology necessary to detect data leaks. They must also check the antecedents of employees before recruiting them.”